In Shades Of Blue
by LITERALLYLEN
Summary: Sometime's it's suffocating how little control you actually have. How all you could do most days is sport a pretty smile and chortle words that make people forget their worries when around you. / An exploration of Misty's Character


**Author's Note 1: Trigger warning for light descriptions of domestic abuse. Stay safe loves33**

**.**

**In Shades of blue **

**.-**

**Your fiery ginger curls are tied into matching pigtails, which frame your round face. **

You do your doll's hair the same way.

You hear' the shouting from across the hall, reverberating through the walls securing you in your room embellished with everything bubblegum pink, and covered by warming sheets, which promise protection from the harsh whip of reality.

With each clashing of fist against hallow walls, , your doll's house shakes a little more. accessories and miniature furniture soaring across your room. But with each spell of stillness, you retrieve the objects from the cold wooden ground, and restore them to their rightful position within the dream-house.

Everything's alright.

.-

You're ten years old now. The milestone of reaching double digits warranting you to begin wearing your curls in a single ponytail. It bobs each time you run…Even in your imagination, where you'd like to run for miles on end without stopping. But for now you merely walk home from school.

As you step through the double doors of the spacious house, not really a home, you catch the waft of gossamer tickling your nostrils.

You walk into your kitchen to find your mother scanning over a newspaper. Light bruises flushing her forearms, and a new mark carved into her left wrist.

She's beautiful, alabaster skin and charming smile. People say you're a tiny replica of her, but you aren't so sure it's a complement.

She spots you a moment after you walk in, rises from her sitting position, and envelops you into a warm embrace, strands of her soft red waves— the same color as your own— tickling your cheek while doing so.

You breathe her in, smell the cigarette smoke and gossamer and all the other components that paint the image of your mother that you know, and it's fine.

Everything's alright.

.-

You're thirteen now. You wear your hair in different types of braids, experimenting with an unfamiliar technique and design each and every morning.

Your long limbed and gawky in ways you despise but your sisters tell you that you'll grow into it. That you're destined to be as dazzling as the lot of them.

You'd prefer being a respected pokemon master over a dazzling starlet any day of the week but you never say as much because you never want them to feel hurt by how much you despise that sort of world.

Boys at school have begun asking you for things that make your cheeks burn scarlet and girls scoff at you with the assumption that you had just listened.

You don't care, not really. Your life is more complicated than a hand-full of mean girls and a flurry of boys that think they're gods. You're more complicated than that.

At least for now, Everything is alright.

.-

You're fifteen now. You wear your flaming locks into a tight bun each and every morning, so to ensure that the strands of hair don't come loose and block your sight during track practice.

You reason that you're some sort of masochist, because no matter how hard, or quickly your legs move…you will always just be running in continuous circles. You will always return to the place you try ever so forcefully to escape.

Sometime's it's suffocating how little control you actually have. How all you could do most days is sport a pretty smile and chortle words that make people forget their worries when around you. People start to see you as a care free girl who's only ever looking for a good time— which usually's defined by a fun crowd of people listening to ridiculously booming toons that blocks out any possibility of hearing your own thoughts, and some decent party favors to help in the loosening of tension—an ode to the flower children of the sixties with the looks of the Tinsel Town starlets before the talkies. And you like that. Like being an escape for the people who choose to spend time with you. The people who say your name, "Misty," with laughter in their voices and bright amusement in their eyes.

You like being that girl even if the demons that lurk in your heart won't ever dissipate by those very same folks.

You don't spend time on pontificating why that is, just smile up prettily at one of the nondescript football players who offer you a drink and spot on his lap.

You're doing great, everything's fine.

.-

It's Daisy's wedding night and she declared you her maid of honor because even with all the ways your childhood was shredded to ribbons and robbed of it's supposed warmth, you're still family and sometimes when your sister smiles you think of the girl who brought you a warm cup of milk and some store bought chocolate chip cookies she had snagged from the downstairs while your parents were yelling and shouting. And you feel a kinship towards her you'll never feel for anyone else.

You're not as pretty as your sister, not by a long-shot, but not many people are, and it doesn't really matter at the end of the day. Daisy met a kind faced law student who promised her that he'd take her far, far away from this place, all the way to Hoenn, where their smiles are as counterfeit as the Gucci bags sold on their streets.

A part of you reckons you should feel abandoned by her, and you do— if only partly— But also you get it, you understand the need to leave this land of suburbia composed of cookie cut outs of who people should be and pasted smiles that never reach the eyes that must've at one point had some breath of life to them.

You get it, so you give her your blessing and dress up in the God awful pea green gown she picks out for you, matching about four others. And you think that the wedding party resembled the homecoming court of royalty that stood so proud before your school, only a few weeks prior.

.-

The threesome of you and your parents don't get home until late.

He had so much to drink, that the very room he stumbles into is saturated by his stench, and your nose wrinkles.

He begins to scream and shout, like all of the times before. You begin the routine of retreating to your room of soft pinks, and safe promises, like all the times before.

But then you see the clenching around your mother's neck. And as you scurry to wrench his hands from the frightening position, he thrusts out a fist to block you. Your cheek scrapes across the brass ring adorning his fat finger.

You rub alcohol against the cut, well aware to the scar that will come about, already contemplating which types of foundation will be full coverage enough to hide it.

Your once perfectly coiled locks is now a mess of waves, tumbling down your trembling shoulders, and you've never been alright, not really.

.-

Your family moves to the city under the misguided folly that a new atmosphere would inspire a new attitude.

You're seventeen now. at the start of your junior year. Your hair is always straightened to perfection, and scrunched into a partial pony tail from behind.

It's not hard for you to get on with a new crowd, it's never really been. People are drawn to you, that's just a truth you wear like a badge of honor, one that you can sometimes hate.

It's in the midst of attending Pallet High that you get to meet, for the first time, some of the most vital people in your world, people who you know to your very core are meant to be a facet of your existence in any dimension you roam.

The charismatic Gary Oak who sometimes treats you like a toy to be won but who you adore anyways. Effortlessly beautiful May Arnaz who sometimes can look at you like those petty girls from your early adolescence, but also is probably the first person to treat you like an actual human, and who you love with all your heart. You know it in your bones that you'd protect her with all the ferociousness you could ever muster. But even then…. You've never felt such a raw, indescribable tug towards someone as you did towards the megawatt smiles and open face of one Ash Ketchum.

You guys met a few weeks ago on a date your moms had set up, and you liked him then, and you like him now. But then there's the fact that you've never been in an actual relationship to this day, and the poor kid seems like he's prone to that kind of world, so you make sure to keep it casual— Casual is safe. You've always appreciated safe.

.-

You've never been much of a student, not brilliant like Gary or as readily prepared to learn like Ash. But you're not as blasé— more enthralled by night life and capturing all her pretty smiles for her well followed insta account— as May either. You know that if this trainer thing doesn't make it, you'll need some sort of education as a safety net, something to ensure that you don't ever have to stay in the household that has never been a home, but also so you'll never have to rely on some dude to whisk you away like your sister had.

You're perfectly fine on striking it out on your own.

So when your class counselor had sat you down one day after watching a preliminary match that was held between you and Brock Harris, all you did was smile as she exalted you. Told you that you could maybe even follow in your father's footsteps and run a gym or even be appointed to the Federal league if only you applied yourself a little more, honed in on your craft in a serious way.

But that very same counselor doesn't see the fear behind the enchanting jade oceans, or the hurt beneath the crooked grin. Those teachers don't understand that you don't have a care between an ivy league or community school, as long as you run far, far away from this place.

.-

You're eighteen now.

Your hair spills into drapes on either side of your round face.

You're surrounded by guests clad in tones of ebony, and faces composed of grief and sorrow. And as the priest speaks of how good of a woman your mother was, the images just keep on continuing to flash in your mind.

A streamer reading graduation, torn from the walls.

The retreating guests.

The sonic-boom of skin smacking against skin.

The crackling of broken ribs.

Her scathing screeches searing into your very being.

Him squeezing and screaming.

squeezing and screaming.

Squeezing and screaming.

Until the very light of her soul is finally extinguished.

And your sobs…

Your ugly, bitter, terrified sobs.

And amidst your tear stricken face, you wonder if her soul will find it's self into the sky. You wonder if her being will form it's self into a forget me not along with all the other stars, whom are made up of women and girls who were so utterly mistreated, that they were taken away to the protection of the heavens above. so to be put to rest from the misery plaguing their mortal lives.

And then you wonder if there is such thing as a heaven.

And it's the first time that you really allow yourself to admit that nothing is alright.

.-

It's only a few weeks after the funeral. Only a few weeks until you get to escape to a school that is far, far away from here.

But now you have nothing to distract you from the demons that lurk in the pristinely kept crevasses of your room. A room composed of pathetic pinks, and punctured promises.

The house no longer smells of gossamer, but rather stale beer and cigarette smoke. He spends his days lounging around, sorrow in his eyes and regret painted with his every expression. You wonder which part he's regretting, the car crash that took your mother's life or the fact he never gave her a reason to fight for it in the first place.

Sometimes he yells at you for not making curfew— as if they ever cared enough to give you one in the first place. Sometimes you let him, knowing that he's taking the hurt he can't adequately articulate out on you, but sometimes you can't help but yell back.

One night, when he's in a particularly pitiful drunken stooper, he flings a hand out so that it smacks you across the face and you push the glass out of his hands in retaliation.

The shards spill across your naked arms and you wonder what it means if you can't feel it.

And while you sob before a mirror, as you attempt to clean the injuries. You see your mother in the reflection back. From the broken smile, to the pitiful glassy eyes that beg to be shattered.

So late that night, when you hear his snoring coming from the couch, you snag a shock-glass, and digest a hand full of pills.

Your head cracks against the tiled ground, as you wonder if this is finally alright.

.-

The next time you awaken, you find doctors watching over you with a nervous sort of tension. And you wonder why heaven's angels don't have any wings.

They begin to rattle off what you already know. So you tune them out, and think of your mother's broken soul.

You swear that you will make things alright once more.

.-

You're twenty-one now.

Your hair falls down in soft locks, brushing the tops of your shoulders, and you're bathed by the light that spills from the window, and into your living room.

You don't run anymore. because you don't have to.

You're father calls you every Tuesday morning with contrite words and a tentative disposition, and you answer over fifty percent of the time. You'll never look at him how May does Norman but you think it's nice not to feel that weight on your chest any longer. You think you're beginning to heal together, and you wonder if you'll ever be able to hav a full conversation with him without your mother's specter hanging in the pregnant space, you doubt it but maybe one day.

Gary's begun talking to you as if you're not standing on that pedestal any longer— like he sees you for all you are and adores you because of all the jagged bits instead of in spite of them. Sometimes you think you guys could've been something in another world where you never felt what it meant to have heartache and where he wasn't so accustomed to getting whatever he pleased. And for her part, May's always by your side with her buoyant chortles and enchanting disposition. She's found herself some stability in the form of a ridiculously good looking academic named Drew who makes the mesmerizing whirlwind that is May Arnaz smile like she's found her center, and you've never been happier for anyone before.

You're proud to call them your closest friends, but you're thankful that you get to come home to the same effortless smiles of the first and only boy who's ever looked at you and saw your core with no embellishments. That when Ash kisses you and gingerly caresses your cheek, you know your alright, that he'll always be there if you're ever not.

Sure, there's a million other problems in your life now. the stresses of adulthood, coupled with how much public attention being part of the elite four garners you— not even taking into account Ash's role as Kanto's champion. But it's okay. Everything's fine because you believe it every morning when you repeat the mantra that one day things will be more than alright.

.-

**Author's Note: Thank you so so much for reading this! It's a bit of a personal piece for me but I'm excited to be sharing it! Another million thank yous to my love Mandy! You are what stars are made of gorgeous and ily to the moon and back!**

**If any of you wonderful sugarplums left me a review letting me know what you thought I would be so entirely thankful! **

**Hope to hear from you soon!**

**All My Love!**

**~Len**


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